One of the things I try to do on a daily basis is check the Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base to see what birthdays are today.  Most of the names I don’t recognize, and many of the ones I do elicit a “Why the heck are they listed here?” response.  I mean, Toni Morrison?  C’mon, gimme a break.

Eric Frank Russell with Bea Mahaffey

But I also see a lot of names I recognize that most people probably wouldn’t.  I grew reading a lot of the older stuff from the 30s and 40s.  Reprint anthologies were abundant.  DAW’s Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF series was being published in those days, Those, the Del Rey Best of series, and the Robert Silverberg edited anthologies in the school library were where I first became aware of a number of writers such as Ross Rocklynne, Margaret St. Clair, Chan Davis, Harry Bates, Charles L. Harness, Cleve Cartmill, Rog Phillips, Judith Merrill, Malcolm Jameson, Tom Godwin, Miriam Allen de Ford, Eric Frank Russell, and others.

At the times these authors were writing, they were well known.  Many of them may have been second tier, but they were steadily producing publishable work.  Granted the field was much smaller then, with only a handful pulp magazines providing outlets for their work, and consequently a reader could read everything published.  Those days are long gone.

That’s not a bad thing.  It’s possible to read widely in a subgenre and still not read everything in that subgenre.

When I scan the list of birthdays every day there are authors I would like to write a post about but don’t.  Usually it’s because I haven’t read them recently enough to have anything intelligent to say.  (Yes, I know I haven’t let that stop me before.)  Or I don’t know much about them, just that they wrote such-and-such a story.  Not all of the work of these authors has aged well.  I want to point people to stories that will entertain them and that they will enjoy reading.  I’m not sure enough about some of these folks  to recommend them.

For example yesterday was Rog Phillips’s birthday.  Phillips was associated with Ray Palmer’s Amazing Stories and the Shaver Mystery, so I am a little leery of doing a post on him until I’ve read/reread some of his work.  I know I’ve read at least two of his stories; they were in Asimov’s Great SF.  It’s been so long I can’t recall anything about them.

Ross Rocklynne

Today’s birthdays include P. Pschuyler Miller, Ross Rocklynne, and Richard A. Lupoff.  Lupoff is still with us and AFAIK, still writing.  I’ve enjoyed the work of all three men.  Just not recently.

Which brings me to my point, to the extent I have one.  There are a lot of writers who had successful careers, many long and prolific.  They were able to sell consistently.  They produced respectable bodies of work, in that they weren’t flash in the pan writers or one hit wonders.  Rather they managed show up in the pulp and magazine tables of contents over a number of years.

I’ve been reading through the current issue of one of the more critically acclaimed sf magazines on days when I buy my lunch on campus.  I have not been impressed.  Mostly I’ve been bored.  I haven’t finished the issue.  Maybe it will get better.  I’m not holding my breath.

It’s unfortunate the publishing world today is such that these authors don’t have retrospective collections.  And I don’t mean the archival hardcovers from publishers like NESFA and Haffner Press. Just some affordable collections, nothing fancy.  Some of these authors are still in print in ebook, although not all of the ebooks available are necessarily paying royalties to the authors’ estates.  (But that is a different post.)  I’m still going to try to find some of these forgotten gems and bring them to your attention.

Any authors you would like me to look at?